We Outgrow Love Like Other Things
by scriptmanip
Summary: One-shot. Naomi comes home from a party at fourteen after kissing Emily Fitch. You know the story. Here's my take on it. [Title belongs to Emily Dickinson, but she said I could borrow it]


**Author's Note:** Hello! Don't worry, I'm as surprised as the rest of you. I swear I wasn't having you on about moving away from writing fic. It's just that sometimes, the mood strikes, and sometimes, I'm granted an hour of free time, and sometimes, that free time turns into, well, this. I've been getting lots of lovely prompts for potential one-shots, and I can't remember if this was one or not. But, I've been thinking about our dear Naomi [shocking, I'm sure] and how she must have fared after that fateful night, and so here it is.

* * *

She doesn't notice you've been drinking – might still be drunk, actually, for all you know, because your cheeks won't stop tingling – and it's not that you've been worried she'd even remotely give a shit. Though, there was a vague curiosity on your slow walk home, feet plodding at a pace you never knew they were capable, about the reaction she might have to her daughter, being only fourteen, glassy-eyed and smelling of fermented fruit. You've yet to try much of anything else, apart from the occasional glass of mulled wine on Christmas Eve with your mum, but Archers Aqua is decidedly _not_ your drink of choice. The remnants of it leaving a sickly coating on your tongue and teeth.

Instead, and you shouldn't have really anticipated anything else, she says you've come home much earlier than she would have guessed and asks if the party was really that shit.

"Of course it was shit, mum." Leah Forman is a ridiculously shallow, brainless twat who couldn't organise a good party if her life depended on it.

"Oh, well, better luck next time then," she says, uselessly optimistic, before looking back to the poster she's been crafting. Something about landfills or rescuing baby seals or something, and you roll your eyes.

But there won't be a next time. There won't be any more parties. Not very, fucking likely. Not if there's a chance _she'll_ be there. Too risky, that. Which of course she will – she'll attend every, sodding one of them – because they forgot to detach the umbilical cord at birth or something, and so she's constantly trailing behind her sister _everywhere_. Tugged along to every class, every assembly, every fucking social event, by some ancient strand of DNA that's kept them connected since birth. Biologically, it doesn't work like that, you realise, but it's the only explanation really, as to why she keeps so close – as to why she spends any amount of time with her sister at all. Because Katie is _awful_. And Emily is lovely.

You almost start crying then, stood right in the middle of your kitchen in front of your mum, for no apparent reason other than the passing thought of Emily being lovely, which makes absolutely no sense, and it's when you decide you must be at least a little drunk.

"You alright, love?"

Your eyes cut to her sharply, and it's then that you feel the sting at their corners. So you swallow back any threatening emotion and harden your expression, like you've learnt to do with all the tossers in your year who don't realise your skirt is shorter not because you're sending out some kind of bloody invitation to be ogled but because your dad was apparently very tall.

"I'm fine. Going to bed."

"You look a bit knackered, actually," she says. But it's not what she means because her eyes are saying something entirely different.

"Yes, being socially active is terribly exhausting," you offer drolly before turning from the table and heading for the stairs to avoid any obligatory parenting advice.

She says nothing though, smiling in return, and to her credit, your mum learned pretty quickly how best to navigate your sullen nature just shortly after your first menstrual period, and generally avoids saying the things she knows you don't want to hear.

"Naomi," she then says cautiously, "if you need a chat …"

Strike that. Your mum's a nosy cow.

"I don't need anything," you tell her mid-step, and then clomp your way up the staircase until you're safely closed behind your bedroom door. Which is when you do start crying.

It wasn't meant to happen this way – this is the thought that's running through your head on a loop. And you're not the girl who sits around on rainy days imagining her first kiss or her wedding or like, the colour of her first prom dress. You're not the girl who reads trashy romance novels and thinks, _someday this could be me_. But you just _know_, deep in your gut, it wasn't meant to happen like this. Which is why your stomach is churning and a massive headache throbs behind your eyes, because fuck if it didn't _feel_ right.

You cry harder at that, perched on the edge of your bed, helplessly clutching the hem of your dress. Because, she _changed_ you. Emily leaned in and touched her lips to yours and changed everything in a second. And she didn't even ask. It's what makes more tears spring up, realising then that it wouldn't have mattered anyway. That Emily could've said, in her somewhat timid pitch that is always pleasantly scratchy and low even though you've never even seen her with a cigarette, _'Can I kiss you?'_ and you'd have let her.

You don't even bother undressing, just crawl up under your blankets in your stupid, yellow dress that you can never wear again because you don't need further reminders of this night. You'll hang it in the very back of your wardrobe, hidden out-of-sight like all your other secrets. Like the purple flower you keep pressed between the pages of a book of poems. You can forget about all of it, you think, if these things stay buried.

A soft knock comes a little while later, when your tears have turned to dried remnants of mascara on your cheeks, making your skin feel tight. Your instinct is to yell, _'Go away,'_ but then there's nothing that follows. Not your mum's voice or the creaking of your door as she lets herself in. So you slip from under the bedclothes and make your way to the door, finding on your doorstep a tray of tea and your favourite biscuits. The corridor is dark and quiet, your mum nowhere to be seen.

The note beside your teacup, which you see only after you've set the tray on your desk, says:

_They're not all bad. You've just got to find the right one. _

You stuff a biscuit into your mouth to keep from crying again, because you refuse to be the girl who cries in her room on a Friday night about how her life is totally, fucking ruined [even if, technically, it is], and then slump onto the floor with the note in your hand.

They're _not_ all bad. Some of them are quite nice. Too nice for their own, fucking good, probably. Kind, in a way that most people aren't. Clever, without being too showy, like you tend to be in History because everyone else is basically ignorant wankers. Funny, while still unassuming. Some of them wear their hair unnaturally red, and tie their fringe back with tacky bows, which should look awful and unattractive. But doesn't. They might even smell like really fresh washing powder. They might taste like sweet oranges. Their lips might be incredibly soft and their eyes a warm brown colour, like melted chocolate. But that's hardly the problem.

The second part then, is the glitch. Emily can't be the right one. She _can't_. Because if she is, everything changes. Again.

You stand up when your pulse starts to race again, terrified not at the memory of her and you sat in a back garden and the kiss that probably surprised you both, but at the realisation that you want to kiss her again. You strip off the dress while stood in front of your wardrobe, and you don't even bother to hang it – better stuffed far into the back corner, you think. Stood there in just your bra and knickers, you have to swallow hard when remembering.

_'I like your dress. It reminds me of daises.'_

_'And that's a good thing?'_

_'Yeah – what's wrong with daises?'_

_'Nothing. They're just terribly ordinary, aren't they? Of course you'd like them, Emily.'_

_'My tastes aren't always _terribly ordinary_, you know. You might be surprised by some of the things I fancy.' _

And, Christ, you should have seen it coming. There was something different in her eyes – a spark of something you'd not ever seen before. There was something unusual about her proximity, thighs almost touching you were sat so close, and the way she kept looking at your mouth for too-long seconds. A chill runs up your back, and you open your eyes, not even realising they were clenched shut, and you remember then that you're half-naked and it's actually _freezing_ in your room. So you get back to the business of things and rifle through the shit collecting at the bottom of your wardrobe before finding the book and opening it with a less-than-steady hand.

The flower's there, brittle pieces of violet petals littering the book binding, but preserved mostly how you remember it. She'd tucked it behind an ear and then smiled as you'd given her a sidelong half-scowl, scribbling notes about the flora, pertinent _only_ to scientific observation and not on how Emily looked rather cute – like some whimsical character or woodland fairy, being even smaller at thirteen than at present. It'd fallen by the time you were all headed back indoors and Emily, too preoccupied with Katie's obnoxious blathering, paid no attention to how you'd snatched it from the ground and tucked it into your pocket.

You sort of hate Emily Dickinson, actually. It's all a bit antiquated and desperate for your tastes. But you read number 49 again anyway, the page stained a bit from a year of being pressed against the petals, and take a deep breath. Your mum's note folds nicely and fits in just behind Emily's flower. You close it then, wrap your dress around it and place it back into the darkest corner of the wardrobe.

Tomorrow, you'll go back to being you, and no one will be any wiser. Emily might have changed you, irrevocably even, but you can live with it without falling to pieces, you think, and no one will have to know. Because you've taken all the evidence, and you've tucked it away.

* * *

**Post script:** Let's see what else ... I had an anniversary, drank bubbly with the wife, that was lovely. I'm still working on part 2 of you-know-what but have had to break to write for a wedding I'm officiating in the next week. Oh, and my pug has a cold. How have you been?


End file.
